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The Paradoxes of Indian System

RASHTRA BHAW
RASHTRA BHAW
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Gang rapeThis is always a good omen for a society if the outcry of its people could lead to a revolution. Revolution is always for a change; change in realities which should not be there! In Nirbhaya gang rape case we witnessed such a revolution when people of every age, group, creed and place surged onto roads and demanded for justice. Revolutions are always symbolic, Nirbhaya was just a representative of thousands of victims and perpetrators were representatives of thousands other criminals of humanity. The society, which had fed up and asphyxiated with a steep surge in crimes against women in recent years, demanded for a renaissance of the system. However, this is an unfortunate truth that the revolution died an immature death because of the paradoxes in society and system.

Although, this is inevitably true that for a complete social renaissance many things are still required to change in our society for empowerment of women but, however, our values and basic idea of civilization never approbate the heinous crimes like rape, therefore, we can conclude that something is wrong with our system, and this has proved in Nirbhaya verdict. In spite of a huge public outcry the main culprit will be walking free just after 3 years because he had 5 months 21 days left to reach his legal adulthood! Does this not show that law is not representing the public will in our democracy even after the very basic principle that in democracy people are sovereign? Does this not denude the paradoxes in assurance of justice given by our constitution?

The Nirbhaya verdict compels us to rethink that what is wrong with our system? How can the law of the state be so impractical that the perpetrator of a heinous crime walks free within three years just because he had to complete 5 months and 21 days to become 18 but he would be punished with far harsher punishment if he had committed even less crime just after six months? Definitely the constitution is not the fixed writing to be imposed on citizens in any way! But, unfortunately, our so called progressive and modern day system lies in that very category which still doesn’t have flexibility of the practicality!

The travesty of the system seems touching its all heights because the decision to indict the culprit under juvenile laws was also challenged in Supreme Court, even then, the revolution had to lose its symbolic fight! The travesty doesn’t end here, it goes far ahead! On August 26, Just six days before the Nirbhaya verdict came, a Delhi court ruled that sex with a girl aged bellow 18 is not a crime if it had consensus of the girl.! Additional session judge of the court said that criminalizing the consensual sex with a minor would mean that the body of an underage individual was a state property and no underage individual could be allowed to have physical pleasure associated with one’s body. The two rulings of the same system simply mean that a minor girl is considered physically and mentally mature enough to have sex but an underage rapist is just a strayed innocent!! Isn’t it ridiculous??

This paradox of the system can’t be cleared by just repealing the given judgment of Delhi court in a higher court, instead, we need an exhaustive debate over it. We don’t want another set of writings replacing the present one, we need a flexible and practical system which can comply with human conscience.

The justice is undoubtedly that can satisfy the inner conscience of a civilized society. A rapist and a brutal murderer, therefore, can’t be accepted or treated as a juvenile. On the other hands, a minor can’t be put behind bars for consensually having sex with someone. But this should also not be translated into legalizing minor sex and backsliding to Mughal era as this will be too stupid to say that child marriage is prohibited but child sex is legitimate! We’ll have to understand the ground realities of the today’s world where children grow in an atmosphere full of sex- from films to tv serials and from advertisements to internet! Another irony is that our system doesn’t seem to take all this into account and pave the way to tackle these problem amplifiers.

For me, need is to look much more in deep. We, as citizens, are interested in eliminating the social crisis, we also put our effort but we put less or no effort to understand how to put our collected effort in a systematic way. After Nirbhaya case millions of people came to roads to protest, thousands of articles were written by intellectuals, hundreds of campaigns were initiated by social activists but, I am afraid to say, no one, except one man, thought how to win this symbolic fight in this system. That one man was Dr. Subramanian Swamy- the renowned crusader, and we should be really thankful to him that he at least challenged the system for its fallacies. Dr. Swamy could not have won the fight of all the Indians but he has shown us the way that we also need a systematic approach apart from protesting on roads.

We should ask the question from ourselves that if parliament can amend the constitution for vote bank in Shahbano case and to protect the tainted MPs against SC verdict then why not to give justice to Nirbhaya and the whole country???

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-Vasudev Tripathi

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